Tim Hawkinson—Finding the Extraordinary in the Ordinary

Garden Variety SF

It’s been awhile since I saw the Tim Hawkinson’s exhibition Zoopsia at the Getty, almost ten years in fact now that I look it up online, and its centre-piece creation "Urberorgan" remains in my mind as one of those rare contemporary works that holds true to its eccentricity while capturing the attention of a mass public.   

Uberorgan on display at the Getty

Youtube video Owen Smigelski

Witnessing "Uberorgan’s" glutinous belching berth crowded into the architectural splendor of the Getty’s atrium was like giving a mysterious sea creature of the deep (sea slug, jelly fish, crossed with a whale and an actual organ) reign above land in a castle of man.   Hawkinson’s images and sculptural renderings of octopuses and bats, combining composites of human parts--lips, hands, fingers, nails--and recycled materials were so deceptive that it took some inspection to dissect their true provenance—unsettling, strange, rooted in the familiar.

Detail, Thumbsucker, 2015

On view Hosfelt Gallery March 26-May 7, 2016 

Cosmonaut thumb, made from impressions of Hawkinson's thumbs